Does CompUSA still exist in 2026?
Not as a store and not as a company. There is no CompUSA location anywhere in the United States, and there has not been one since 2008. The chain was down to 103 stores by December 2007, when it was sold to Specialty Equity LLC, an affiliate of the Boston restructuring firm Gordon Brothers Group, and those stores ran closing sales through the holidays before emptying out.
The name lasted longer than the buildings. Systemax, the parent company of TigerDirect, bought CompUSA's brand and website in early 2008 and put the logo back over a small group of stores and an online shop. That ended in the fourth quarter of 2012, when Systemax consolidated its United States consumer business under TigerDirect and wrote the CompUSA brand off its books.
Since then CompUSA has been a name without a business. The last attempt to use it, in 2020, was not a retailer at all, and it did not sell a single computer.
How big did CompUSA get before it shrank?
Bigger than most people remember. The business opened in 1984 as Soft Warehouse, Inc., traded under that name until March 1991, and then ran as CompUSA out of Dallas, with its common stock on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker CPU.
At the close of fiscal 1999 on June 26 of that year, CompUSA operated 211 computer superstores averaging about 26,000 square feet, across 83 metropolitan areas in 42 states. Net sales for the year were $6.32 billion, up 19.6 percent from $5.29 billion the year before. That is the high-water mark in the company's own filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and it is why the chain turns up in so many first-PC stories: for a stretch in the late 1990s there was one within driving distance of most American metro areas.
Some of that reach was bought rather than built. On August 31, 1998, CompUSA completed its purchase of Computer City from Tandy Corporation, the company behind RadioShack, then closed most of the stores it acquired and converted the rest to CompUSA superstores. Selling personal computers out of a warehouse still looked like a growth business.
Who owned CompUSA when it collapsed?
Carlos Slim did. On January 24, 2000, the Mexican financier's Grupo Sanborns announced a definitive agreement to buy every CompUSA share it did not already hold for $10.10 in cash, having controlled roughly 14.8 percent beforehand. The tender offer closed on February 29, 2000, and Grupo Sanborns announced the next day that about 69.5 million shares had been tendered, leaving its acquisition vehicle with roughly 89.9 percent of the company. Microsoft, SBC Communications and Telefonos de Mexico came in as minority investors.
Ownership was never the problem. Margin was. PC prices fell year after year, and the profit in consumer electronics moved toward flat-panel televisions, where Circuit City and Best Buy were already undercutting each other. CompUSA cycled through chief executives and turnaround plans, closed stores through 2007, and still lost money on the ones that were left. By December of that year the owner had stopped funding it.
Why did CompUSA close its stores in December 2007?
Because a liquidator bought it, not a retailer. On December 7, 2007, CompUSA was sold to Specialty Equity LLC, the Gordon Brothers affiliate, with 103 stores still trading. Bill Weinstein, the Gordon Brothers principal who took over as CompUSA's interim president, said "an orderly and expedited wind-down and asset sale process is the best option for CompUSA and its creditors at this juncture." Chief executive Roman Ross stayed on as an adviser.
That is what makes the ending different from the chains CompUSA competed against. There was no drawn-out Chapter 11, no reorganization plan and no fight over the whole company. Gordon Brothers treated CompUSA as a parts bin, shopping stores in strong retail markets, the technical-services business and the website as separate lots, and left it to each buyer to decide whether the name came along. The warehouse-sized boxes, the same format Fry's Electronics built its business on, went dark over the following weeks.
What did Systemax do with the CompUSA brand?
It ran the name beside its own for four years. Systemax, which already owned TigerDirect, bought CompUSA's e-commerce business and intellectual property in January 2008 and took over a small group of store leases in the months after, reopening them under the CompUSA sign. It later picked up the Circuit City name the same way, so one company was selling computers under three consumer brands at once.
Then it decided one was enough. In the fourth quarter of 2012 Systemax concluded that its North American consumer business would work better consolidated under TigerDirect, its largest brand, and took an impairment charge of about $35.3 million against the trademarks, domain names and goodwill of CompUSA and Circuit City. Both names were folded into TigerDirect in late December 2012.
That charge is the closest thing CompUSA has to a death certificate. It put a number on what the name was worth to the last company that genuinely tried to sell computers with it, and that number went to zero on the books at the end of 2012.
Has anyone tried to bring CompUSA back?
Once, and not as a shop. In August 2020 DealCentral, LLC announced that a rebuilt CompUSA.com had entered beta, and the site sold nothing: it graded technology deals and sent shoppers elsewhere to buy them, with price alerts and stock alerts instead of shelves. "We want to be the first place that shoppers check for all of their tech needs," founder Yishai Grossman said in the announcement. That is the last commercial use the name has had.
Where to find CompUSA memorabilia today. The only supply is retail debris, most of it from people who worked in the stores or who cleared out a location as it closed: embroidered employee polo shirts, 1990s store charge cards, plastic shelf talkers and the occasional piece of signage. Searches for CompUSA items on Etsy turn up a handful at a time, priced on condition and sentiment rather than on scarcity, and none of it is rare enough to treat as an investment.
Frequently Asked Questions
When did CompUSA close?
CompUSA sold its remaining 103 stores in December 2007 to Specialty Equity LLC, an affiliate of Gordon Brothers Group, and those stores ran closing sales through the holidays before shutting in 2008. A smaller CompUSA-branded chain run by Systemax lasted until late December 2012, when it was folded into TigerDirect.
Who owns CompUSA now?
No operating retailer owns CompUSA. Systemax retired the brand in the fourth quarter of 2012 and wrote it off, and the most recent holder to do anything with the name was DealCentral, LLC, which relaunched CompUSA.com as a deal-referral site in 2020 rather than as a store.
Did TigerDirect buy CompUSA?
Systemax, which owned TigerDirect, bought CompUSA's e-commerce business and brand in January 2008 and reopened a small group of CompUSA stores. It ran CompUSA as a separate brand until the fourth quarter of 2012, when it consolidated its United States consumer operations under TigerDirect and took an impairment charge of roughly $35.3 million against the CompUSA and Circuit City intangibles.